The electrical grid delivers electrical power to consumers using an interconnected power network. Power stations/plants produce electricity from a number of different power sources including, but not limited to, combustible fuels, nuclear fission, water, solar energy and wind. Utility power lines deliver the electricity from the power stations to consumer's premises (e.g., customers of the power supply provider), which include residential and commercial buildings. Long distance transmission can be carried out using high voltage alternating current (AC) (e.g., on order of hundreds of kilovolts), which is useful for reducing energy loss. Substations include transformers for reducing the voltage (e.g., under 10,000 volts or under 13,200 volts) for subsequent delivery to a local area. The voltage can be further reduced (e.g., down to 120-280 volts) using a local transformer, sometimes referred to as a transformer drum/can for its traditional drum-like shape or as a pad mount, for delivery to a consumer's premises. For example, in residential circumstances, the voltage can be further reduced down to 240 volts using a local transformer.
Service providers are dependent on proper operation of their respective networks to deliver services to the customers. Often, it can be desirable or necessary to ascertain information regarding the services that are provided. For example, the service provider may want access to daily usage reports to efficiently bill their customers for the resources that are consumed or otherwise utilized by the customers. Therefore, it is important for data specifying resource utilization and other information to be reliably transmitted and/or received at specified intervals.
In power line communication (PLC) networks, data from a power substation (e.g., from the collector/transmitter) can be communicated to the endpoint circuits in the network (e.g., meters, load control switches, remote service switches, and other endpoints) by transmitting data over power lines that also carry alternating current. In some instances, there is no common communication scheme to use to communicate to all endpoint circuits in the PLC network, which poses a challenge for communicating data to the endpoint circuitry. To communicate data to the endpoint circuitry, a different set of electronics could be designed and dedicated for each different communication scheme. However, dedicated sets of electronics can raise concerns in terms of physical space, power consumption, increased heat, and communication interference.
These and other matters have presented challenges to power line communication networks, for a variety of applications.